Crash Sites All But Forgotten

November 21, 2010|By DAVID K. LEFF, The Hartford Courant

On a sleety March evening in 1943, a young fighter pilot bound from Long Island to Bradley Field died when his P-40 fighter crashed into a wooded Norfolk hillside so remote that it took almost a month before he was accidentally found by two Yale students surveying timber. The military cleaned the site and the forest healed. By the 21st century's turn the event had faded to a faint, if colorful rumor. But for the sleuthing of Jody Bronson, a bearded bear of a man who is the forester at Great Mountain Forest, the event might be forgotten today.

Using woodsman's instincts as he looked for crown damage and other signs in the forest, Bronson found a cigar-shaped trench on a rocky slope where the fuselage of Lt. Daniel Henry Thorson's plane had burrowed into shallow soil. Nearby he discovered part of the control panel, a piece of Plexiglas, hydraulic hose and metal shards. With the help of others, Bronson has given the story new currency and a 3-foot-tall, 640-pound granite monument now stands beneath tall maples, birch and beech deep in the privately owned woods.

With storied names like Pratt and Whitney, Kaman, Lycoming and Sikorsky, Connecticut is famous worldwide for aviation. As a result, you might think we'd take particular notice of aircraft crashes with their traumatic, often tragic results. But despite their headline-grabbing quality, it doesn't take long for a collective amnesia to overtake us. Even the fatal 1941 Windsor Locks crash site of Second Lt. Eugene Bradley, namesake of the state's largest airport, remained a mystery until 2009 when the site was discovered by researchers under the aegis of State Archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni.

Since the dawn of aviation, Connecticut has experienced hundreds of commercial, military and private plane crashes resulting from bad weather, pilot error, engine difficulty and other mechanical failures. Few are memorialized like the Lt. Vincent H. Core site in Farmington's town forest.

Core was killed flying a training run in 1945 when his P-47 fighter crashed into the trees. It's a quiet, contemplative place with a rock cairn surrounded by a low stone wall. There's a bronze plaque, a flagpole flying the Stars and Stripes, a bench, and a well-crafted birdhouse topped by a plane model. With the thunderous crash long gone and nothing to hear but birdsong and wind sough, it's a good spot to contemplate the sacrifice of service members who died in training. Not all heroes endured combat deaths.

Most crash sites are at airports, or at nearby places that have become subdivisions, shopping centers and parking lots. In North Haven, the dramatic explosion and fire from a crashed P-47 in 1943 following the flier's successful parachuting was almost erased from local memory until the aged pilot paid a surprise visit to the local historical society a few years back.

Although the crash site has long ago given way to houses, dedicated society members have kept alive a host of interesting stories that add gravity and allure to the community. While digging for a septic system in the area recently, a construction crew unearthed some of the fighter's .50 caliber machine gun rounds.

Pieces of wreckage are still evident in some places. On Middletown and Middlefield's Higby Mountain, not far from the blue-blazed Metacomet Trail's cliff-edged windings along the traprock ridge, pipes, gears, struts, wires, springs and shards of sheet metal lie among ferns and leaf litter. They're remains of a twin engine Beechcraft that smashed into the mountain in 1954 and burst into flames, burning the pilot and two passengers beyond recognition.

Rusting landing gear struts and pieces of frame embedded in the ground remain at two sites on the former Norwich State Hospital grounds in Preston. It's all that's left of two Grumman F6F-5N "Hellcat" fighters that collided while practicing night interceptions in 1944. The metal parts memorialize the pilots at what are now state archaeological preserves.

In 1946, an airliner caught fire and plunged to the ground in Cheshire, killing 17 people. On a foggy February morning in 1959, a Piper Comanche rammed into Pine Mountain in Ridgefield, causing a fiery explosion and killing all four aboard. A twin-engine Learjet 35 crashed into 4 feet of water in Long Island Sound in 1971, just short of the airport in Groton.

About a year ago, the pilot of a single-engine experimental plane died and caused extensive electrical outages on hitting a power substation near the Waterbury-Oxford Airport.

There's no need to commemorate every crash site, but marking a few provides valuable lessons in heroism, history, technology and the power of unforeseen circumstances. Aircraft that fell from the sky await discovery. Not all the mystery in our landscape is from long ago and far away.

David K. Leff is a member of the Place Board of Contributors and the author of two nonfiction books and two volumes of poetry. More of his work is available at http://www.davidkleff.com .